Chapter XVI (4)

Thucydidês places himself generally in the same point of view as Herodotus with regard to mythical antiquity, yet with some considerable differences. Though manifesting no belief in present miracles or prodigies,[938] he seems to accept without reserve the preexistent reality of all the persons mentioned in the mythes, and of the long series of generations extending back through so many supposed centuries: in this category, too, are included the eponymous personages, Hellen, Kekrops, Eumolpus, Pandiôn, Amphilochus the son of Amphiaräus, and Akarnan. But on the other hand, we find no trace of that distinction between a human and an heroic ante-human race, which Herodotus still admitted,—nor any respect for Egyptian legends. Thucydidês, regarding the personages of the mythes as men of the same breed and stature with his own contemporaries, not only tests the acts imputed to them by the same limits of credibility, but presumes in them the same political views and feelings as he was accustomed to trace in the proceedings of Peisistratus or Periklês. He treats the Trojan war as a great political enterprise, undertaken by all Greece; brought into combination through the imposing power of Agamemnôn, not (according to the legendary narrative) through the influence of the oath exacted by Tyndareus. Then he explains how the predecessors of Agamemnôn arrived at so vast a dominion—beginning with Pelops, who came over (as he says) from Asia with great wealth among the poor Peloponnêsians, and by means of this wealth so aggrandized himself, though a foreigner, as to become the eponym of the peninsula. Next followed his son Atreus, who acquired after the death of Eurystheus the dominion of Mykênæ, which had before been possessed by the descendants of Perseus: here the old legendary tale, which described Atreus as having been banished by his father Pelops in consequence of the murder of his elder brother Chrysippus, is invested with a political bearing, as explaining the reason why Atreus retired to Mykênæ. Another legendary tale—the defeat and death of Eurystheus by the fugitive Herakleids in Attica, so celebrated in Attic tragedy as having given occasion to the generous protecting intervention of Athens—is also introduced as furnishing the cause why Atreus succeeded to the deceased Eurystheus: “for Atreus, the maternal uncle of Eurystheus, had been entrusted by the latter with his government during the expedition into Attica, and had effectually courted the people, who were moreover in great fear of being attacked by the Herakleids.” Thus the Pelopids acquired the supremacy in Peloponnêsus, and Agamemnôn was enabled to get together his 1200 ships and 100,000 men for the expedition against Troy. Considering that contingents were furnished from every portion of Greece, Thucydidês regards this as a small number, treating the Homeric catalogue as an authentic muster-roll, perhaps rather exaggerated than otherwise. He then proceeds to tell us why the armament was not larger: many more men could have been furnished, but there was not sufficient money to purchase provisions for their subsistence; hence they were compelled, after landing and gaining a victory, to fortify their camp, to divide their army, and to send away one portion for the purpose of cultivating the Chersonese, and another portion to sack the adjacent towns. This was the grand reason why the siege lasted so long as ten years. For if it had been possible to keep the whole army together, and to act with an undivided force, Troy would have been taken both earlier and at smaller cost.[939]

[938] “Ut conquirere fabulosa (says Tacitus, Hist. ii. 50, a
worthy parallel of Thucydidês) et fictis oblectare legentium
animos, procul gravitate cœpti operis crediderim, ita vulgatis
traditisque demere fidem non ausim. Die, quo Bebriaci
certabatur, avem inusitatâ specie, apud Regium Lepidum celebri
vico consedisse, incolæ memorant; nec deinde cœtu hominum aut
circumvolitantium alitum, territam pulsamque, donec Otho se ipse
interficeret: tum ablatam ex oculis: et tempora reputantibus,
initium finemque miraculi cum Othonis exitu competisse.”
Suetonius (Vesp. 5) recounts a different miracle, in which three
eagles appear.

This passage of Tacitus occurs immediately after his magnificent
description of the suicide of the emperor Otho, a deed which he
contemplates with the most fervent admiration. His feelings were
evidently so wrought up that he was content to relax the canons
of historical credibility.

[939] Thucyd. i. 9-12.

Such is the general sketch of the war of Troy, as given by Thucydidês. So different is it from the genuine epical narrative, that we seem hardly to be reading a description of the same event; still less should we imagine that the event was known, to him as well as to us, only through the epic poets themselves. The men, the numbers, and the duration of the siege, do indeed remain the same; but the cast and juncture of events, the determining forces, and the characteristic features, are altogether heterogeneous. But, like Herodotus, and still more than Herodotus, Thucydidês was under the pressure of two conflicting impulses—he shared the general faith in the mythical antiquity, but at the same time he could not believe in any facts which contradicted the laws of historical credibility or probability. He was thus under the necessity of torturing the matter of the old mythes into conformity with the subjective exigencies of his own mind: he left out, altered, recombined, and supplied new connecting principles and supposed purposes, until the story became such as no one could have any positive reason for calling in question: though it lost the impressive mixture of religion, romance, and individual adventure, which constituted its original charm, it acquired a smoothness and plausibility, and a poetical _ensemble_, which the critics were satisfied to accept as historical truth. And historical truth it would doubtless have been, if any independent evidence could have been found to sustain it. Had Thucydidês been able to produce such new testimony, we should have been pleased to satisfy ourselves that the war of Troy, as he recounted it, was the real event; of which the war of Troy, as sung by the epic poets, was a misreported, exaggerated, and ornamented recital. But in this case the poets are the only real witnesses, and the narrative of Thucydidês is a mere extract and distillation from their incredibilities.

A few other instances may be mentioned to illustrate the views of Thucydidês respecting various mythical incidents. 1. He treats the residence of the Homeric Phæakians at Corkyra as an undisputed fact, and employs it partly to explain the efficiency of the Korkyrean navy in times preceding the Peloponnesian war.[940] 2. He notices, with equal confidence, the story of Têreus and Proknê, daughter of Pandiôn, and the murder of the child Itys by Proknê his mother, and Philomêla; and he produces this ancient mythe with especial reference to the alliance between the Athenians and Têrês, king of the Odrysian Thracians, during the time of the Peloponnesian war, intimating that the Odrysian Têrês was neither of the same family nor of the same country as Têreus the husband of Proknê.[941] The conduct of Pandiôn, in giving his daughter Proknê in marriage to Têreus, is in his view dictated by political motives and interests. 3. He mentions the Strait of Messina as the place through which Odysseus is said to have sailed.[942] 4. The Cyclôpes and the Læstrygones (he says) were the most ancient reported inhabitants of Sicily; but he cannot tell to what race they belonged, nor whence they came.[943] 5. Italy derived its name from Italus, king of the Sikels. 6. Eryx and Egesto in Sicily were founded by fugitive Trojans after the capture of Troy; also Skionê, in the Thracian peninsula of Pallênê, by Greeks from the Achæan town of Pellênê, stopping thither in their return from the siege of Troy: the Amphilochian Argos in the Gulf of Ambrakia was in like manner founded by Amphilochus son of Amphiaräus, in his return from the same enterprise. The remorse and mental derangement of the matricidal Alkmæôn, son of Amphiaräus, is also mentioned by Thucydidês,[944] as well as the settlement of his son Akarnan in the country called after him Akarnania.[945]

[940] Thucyd. i. 25.

[941] Thucyd. ii. 29. Καὶ τὸ ἔργον τὸ περὶ τὸν Ἴτυν αἱ γυναῖκες
ἐν τῇ γῇ ταύτῃ ἔπραξαν· πολλοῖς δὲ καὶ τῶν ποιητῶν ἐν ἀηδόνος
μνήμῃ Δαυλιὰς ἡ ὄρνις ἐπωνόμασται. Εἰκὸς τε καὶ τὸ κῆδος Πανδίονα
ξυνάψασθαι τῆς θυγατρὸς διὰ τοσούτου, ἐπ᾽ ὠφελείᾳ τῇ πρὸς
ἀλλήλους, μᾶλλον ἢ διὰ πολλῶν ἡμερῶν ἐς Ὀδρύσας ὁδοῦ. The first
of these sentences would lead us to infer, if it came from any
other pen than that of Thucydidês, that the writer believed the
metamorphosis of Philomêla into a nightingale: see above, ch. xi.
p. 270.

The observation respecting the convenience of neighborhood for
the marriage is remarkable, and shows how completely Thucydidês
regarded the event as historical. What would he have said
respecting the marriage of Oreithyia, daughter of Erechtheus,
with Boreas, and the prodigious distance which she is reported
to have been carried by her husband? Ὑπέρ τε πόντον πάντ᾽, ἐπ᾽
ἔσχατα χθονὸς, etc. (Sophoklês ap. Strabo. vii. p. 295.)

From the way in which Thucydidês introduces the mention of this
event, we see that he intended to correct the misapprehension
of his countrymen, who having just made an alliance with the
Odrysian _Têrês_, were led by that circumstance to think of the
old mythical _Têreus_, and to regard him as the ancestor of
_Têrês_.

[942] Thucyd. iv. 24.

[943] Thucyd. vi. 2.

[944] Thucyd. ii. 68-102; iv. 120; vi. 2. Antiochus of Syracuse,
the contemporary of Thucydidês, also mentioned Italus as the
eponymous king of Italy: he farther named Sikelus, who came to
Morgos, son of Italus, after having been banished from Rome. He
talks about Italus, just as Thucydidês talks about Thêseus, as
a wise and powerful king, who first acquired a great dominion
(Dionys. H. A. R. i. 12, 35, 73). Aristotle also mentioned Italus
in the same general terms (Polit. vii. 9, 2).

[945] We may here notice some particulars respecting Isokratês.
He manifests entire confidence in the authenticity of the
mythical genealogies and chronology; but while he treats the
mythical personages as historically real, he regards them at the
same time not as human, but as half-gods, superior to humanity.
About Helena, Thêseus, Sarpêdôn, Cycnus, Memnôn, Achilles, etc.,
see Encom. Helen. Or. x. pp. 282, 292, 295. Bek. Helena was
worshipped in his time as a goddess at Therapnæ (_ib._ p. 295).
He recites the settlements of Danaus, Kadmus, and Pelops in
Greece, as undoubted historical facts (p. 297). In his discourse
called _Busiris_, he accuses Polykratês, the sophist, of a gross
anachronism, in having placed Busiris subsequent in point of date
to Orpheus and Æolus (Or. xi. p. 301, Bek.), and he adds that the
tale of Busiris having been slain by Hêraklês was chronologically
impossible (p. 309). Of the long Athenian genealogy from Kekrops
to Thêseus, he speaks with perfect historical confidence
(Panathenaic. p. 349, Bek.); not less so of the adventures
of Hêraklês and his mythical contemporaries, which he places
in the mouth of Archidamus as a justification of the Spartan
title to Messenia (Or. vi. _Archidamus_, p. 156, Bek.; compare
Or. v. _Philippus_, pp. 114, 138), φάσιν, οἷς περὶ τῶν παλαιῶν
πιστεύομεν, etc. He condemns the poets in strong language for
the wicked and dissolute tales which they circulated respecting
the gods: many of them (he says) had been punished for such
blasphemies by blindness, poverty, exile, and other misfortunes
(Or. xi. p. 309, Bek.).

In general, it may be said that Isokratês applies no principles
of historical criticism to the mythes; he rejects such as appear
to him discreditable or unworthy, and believes the rest.

Such are the special allusions made by this illustrious author in the course of his history to mythical events. From the tenor of his language we may see that he accounted all that could be known about them to be uncertain and unsatisfactory; but he has it much at heart to show, that even the greatest were inferior in magnitude and importance to the Peloponnesian war.[946] In this respect his opinion seems to have been at variance with that which was popular among his contemporaries.

[946] Thucyd. i. 21-22.

The first two volumes of this history have been noticed in an
able article of the Quarterly Review, for October, 1846; as well
as in the Heidelberger Jahrbücher der Literatur (1846. No. 41.
pp. 641-655), by Professor Kortüm.

While expressing, on several points, approbation of my work, by
which I feel much flattered—both my English and my German critic
take partial objection to the views respecting Grecian legend.
While the Quarterly Reviewer contends that the mythopœic faculty
of the human mind, though essentially loose and untrustworthy,
is never creative, but requires some basis of fact to work
upon—Kortüm thinks that I have not done justice to Thucydidês,
as regards his way of dealing with legend; that I do not allow
sufficient weight to the authority of an historian so circumspect
and so cold-blooded (den kalt-blüthigsten und besonnensten
Historiker des Alterthums, p. 653) as a satisfactory voucher for
the early facts of Grecian history in his preface (Herr G. fehlt
also, wenn er das anerkannt kritische Proœmium als Gewährsmann
verschmäht, p. 654).

No man feels more powerfully than I do the merits of Thucydidês
as an historian, or the value of the example which he set in
multiplying critical inquiries respecting matters recent and
verifiable. But the ablest judge or advocate, in investigating
specific facts, can proceed no further than he finds witnesses
having the means of knowledge, and willing more or less to tell
truth. In reference to facts prior to 776 B. C., Thucydidês had
nothing before him except the legendary poets, whose credibility
is not at all enhanced by the circumstance that he accepted them
as witnesses, applying himself only to cut down and modify their
allegations. His credibility in regard to the specific facts of
these early times depends altogether upon theirs. Now we in our
day are in a better position for appreciating their credibility
than he was in his, since the foundations of historical evidence
are so much more fully understood, and good or bad materials
for history are open to comparison in such large extent and
variety. Instead of wondering that he shared the general faith
in such delusive guides—we ought rather to give him credit for
the reserve with which he qualified that faith, and for the sound
idea of historical possibility to which he held fast as the limit
of his confidence. But it is impossible to consider Thucydidês
as a _satisfactory guarantee_ (Gewährsmann) for matters of fact
which he derives only from such sources.

Professor Kortüm considers that I am inconsistent with myself
in refusing to discriminate particular matters of historical
fact among the legends—and yet in accepting these legends (in
my chap. xx.) as giving a faithful mirror of the general state
of early Grecian society (p. 653). It appears to me that this
is no inconsistency, but a real and important distinction.
Whether Hêraklês, Agamemnôn, Odysseus, etc. were real persons,
and performed all, or a part, of the possible actions ascribed
to them—I profess myself unable to determine. But even assuming
both the persons and their exploits to be fictions, these very
fictions will have been conceived and put together in conformity
to the general social phænomena among which the describer and
his hearers lived—and will thus serve as illustrations of the
manners then prevalent. In fact, the real value of the Preface
of Thucydidês, upon which Professor Kortüm bestows such just
praise, consists, not in the particular facts which he brings out
by altering the legends, but in the rational general views which
he sets forth respecting early Grecian society, and respecting
the steps as well as the causes whereby it attained its actual
position as he saw it.

Professor Kortüm also affirms that the mythes contain “real
matter of fact along with mere conceptions:” which affirmation is
the same as that of the Quarterly Reviewer, when he says that the
mythopœic faculty is not creative. Taking the mythes in the mass,
I doubt not that this is true, nor have I anywhere denied it.
Taking them one by one, I neither affirm nor deny it. My position
is, that, whether there be matter of fact or not, we have no
test whereby it can be singled out, identified, and severed from
the accompanying fiction. And it lies upon those, who proclaim
the practicability of such severance, to exhibit some means of
verification better than any which has been yet pointed out. If
Thucydidês has failed in doing this, it is certain that none of
the many authors who have made the same attempt after him have
been more successful.

It cannot surely be denied that the mythopœic faculty is
_creative_, when we have before us so many divine legends, not
merely in Greece, but in other countries also. To suppose that
these religious legends are mere exaggerations, etc. of some
basis of actual fact—that the gods of polytheism were merely
divinized men, with qualities distorted or feigned—would be to
embrace in substance the theory of Euêmerus.

To touch a little upon the later historians by whom these mythes were handled, we find that Anaximenês of Lampsacus composed a consecutive history of events, beginning from the Theogony down to the battle of Mantineia.[947] But Ephorus professed to omit all the mythical narratives which are referred to times anterior to the return of the Herakleids, (such restriction would of course have banished the siege of Troy,) and even reproved those who introduced mythes into historical writing; adding, that everywhere truth was the object to be aimed at.[948] Yet in practice he seems often to have departed from his own rule.[949] Theopompus, on the other hand, openly proclaimed that he could narrate fables in his history better than Herodotus, or Ktesias, or Hellanikus.[950] The fragments which remain to us, exhibit some proof that this promise was performed as to quantity;[951] though as to his style of narration, the judgment of Dionysius is unfavorable. Xenophôn ennobled his favorite amusement of the chase by numerous examples chosen from the heroic world, tracing their portraits with all the simplicity of an undiminished faith. Kallisthenês, like Ephorus, professed to omit all mythes which referred to a time anterior to the return of the Herakleids; yet we know that he devoted a separate book or portion of his history to the Trojan war.[952] Philistus introduced some mythes in the earlier portions of his Sicilian history; but Timæus was distinguished above all others for the copious and indiscriminate way in which he collected and repeated such legends.[953] Some of these writers employed their ingenuity in transforming the mythical circumstances into plausible matter of history: Ephorus, in particular, converted the serpent Pythô, slain by Apollo, into a tyrannical king.[954]

[947] Diodôr. xv. 89. He was a contemporary of Alexander the
Great.

[948] Diodôr. iv. 1. Strabo, ix. p. 422, ἐπιτιμήσας τοῖς
φιλομυθοῦσιν ἐν τῇ τῆς ἱστωρίας γραφῇ.

[949] Ephorus recounted the principal adventures of Hêraklês
(Fragm. 8, 9, ed. Marx.), the tales of Kadmus and Harmonia
(Fragm. 12), the banishment of Ætôlus from Elis (Fragm. 15;
Strabo, viii. p. 357); he drew inferences from the chronology of
the Trojan and Theban wars (Fragm. 28); he related the coming
of Dædalus to the Sikan king Kokalus, and the expedition of the
Amazons (Fragm. 99-103).

He was particularly copious in his information about κτίσεις,
ἀποικίαι and συγγενείαι (Polyb. ix. 1).

[950] Strabo, i. p. 74.

[951] Dionys. Halic. De Vett. Scriptt. Judic. p. 428, Reisk;
Ælian, V. H. iii. 18, Θεόπομπος ... δεινὸς μυθόλογος.

Theopompus affirmed, that the bodies of those who went into the
forbidden precinct (τὸ ἄβατον) of Zeus, in Arcadia, gave no
shadow (Polyb. xvi. 12). He recounted the story of Midas and
Silênus (Fragm. 74, 75, 76, ed. Wichers); he said a good deal
about the heroes of Troy; and he seems to have assigned the
misfortunes of the Νόστοι to an historical cause—the rottenness
of the Grecian ships, from the length of the siege, while the
genuine epic ascribes it to the anger of Athênê (Fragm. 112,
113, 114; Schol. Homer. Iliad, ii. 135); he narrated an alleged
expulsion of Kinyras from Cyprus by Agamemnôn (Fragm. 111);
he gave the genealogy of the Macedonian queen Olympias up to
Achilles and Æakus (Fragm. 232).

[952] Cicero, Epist. ad Familiar. v. 12; Xenophôn de Venation. c.
1.

[953] Philistus, Fragm. 1 (Göller), Dædalus, and Kokalus; about
Liber and Juno (Fragm. 57); about the migration of the Sikels
into Sicily, eighty years after the Trojan war (ap. Dionys. Hal.
i. 3).

Timæus (Fragm. 50, 51, 52, 53, Göller) related many fables
respecting Jasôn, Mêdea, and the Argonauts generally. The
miscarriage of the Athenian armament under Nikias, before
Syracuse, is imputed to the anger of Hêraklês against the
Athenians because they came to assist the Egestans, descendants
of Troy (Plutarch, Nikias, 1),—a naked reproduction of genuine
epical agencies by an historian; also about Diomêdês and the
Daunians; Phaëthôn and the river Eridanus; the combats of the
Gigantes in the Phlegræan plains (Fragm. 97, 99, 102).

[954] Strabo, ix. p. 422.

But the author who pushed this transmutation of legend into history to the greatest length, was the Messenian Euêmerus, contemporary of Kassander of Macedôn. He melted down in this way the divine persons and legends, as well as the heroic—representing both gods and heroes as having been mere earth-born men, though superior to the ordinary level in respect of force and capacity, and deified or heroified after death as a recompense for services or striking exploits. In the course of a voyage into the Indian sea, undertaken by command of Kassander, Euêmerus professed to have discovered a fabulous country called Panchaia, in which was a temple of the Triphylian Zeus: he there described a golden column, with an inscription purporting to have been put up by Zeus himself, and detailing his exploits while on earth.[955] Some eminent men, among whom may be numbered Polybius, followed the views of Euêmerus, and the Roman poet Ennius[956] translated his Historia Sacra; but on the whole he never acquired favor, and the unblushing inventions which he put into circulation were of themselves sufficient to disgrace both the author and his opinions. The doctrine that all the gods had once existed as mere men offended the religious pagans, and drew upon Euêmerus the imputation of atheism; but, on the other hand, it came to be warmly espoused by several of the Christian assailants of paganism,—by Minucius Felix, Lactantius, and St. Augustin, who found the ground ready prepared for them in their efforts to strip Zeus and the other pagan gods of the attributes of deity. They believed not only in the main theory, but also in the copious details of Euêmerus; and the same man whom Strabo casts aside as almost a proverb for mendacity, was extolled by them as an excellent specimen of careful historical inquiry.[957]

[955] Compare Diodôr. v. 44-46; and Lactantius, De Falsâ Relig.
i. 11.

[956] Cicero, De Naturâ Deor. i. 42; Varro, De Re Rust. i. 48.

[957] Strabo, ii. p. 102. Οὐ πολὺ οὖν λείπεται ταῦτα τῶν Πύθεω
καὶ Εὐημέρου καὶ Ἀντιφάνους ψευσμάτων; compare also i. p. 47, and
ii. p. 104.

St. Augustin, on the contrary, tells us (Civitat. Dei, vi. 7),
“Quid de ipse Jove senserunt, qui nutricem ejus in Capitolio
posuerunt? Nonne attestati sunt omnes Euemero, qui non fabulosâ
garrulitate, sed _historicâ diligentiâ_, homines fuisse
mortalesque conscripsit?” And Minucius Felix (Octav. 20-21),
“Euemerus exequitur Deorum natales: patrias, sepulcra dinumerat,
et per provincias monstrat, Dictæi Jovis, et Apollinis Delphici,
et Phariæ Isidis, et Cereris Eleusiniæ.” Compare Augustin, Civit.
Dei, xviii. 8-14; and Clemens Alexand. Cohort. ad Gent. pp.
15-18, Sylb.

Lactantius (De Falsâ Relig. c. 13, 14, 16) gives copious
citations from Ennius’s translation of the Historia Sacra of
Euêmerus.

Εὐήμερος, ὁ ἐπικληθεὶς ἄθεος, Sextus Empiricus, adv. Physicos,
ix. § 17-51. Compare Cicero, De Nat. Deor. i. 42; Plutarch, De
Iside et Osiride, c. 23. tom. ii. p. 475, ed. Wytt.

Nitzsch assumes (Helden Sage der Griechen, sect. 7. p. 84) that
the voyage of Euêmerus to Panchaia was intended only as an
amusing romance, and that Strabo, Polybius, Eratosthenês and
Plutarch were mistaken in construing it as a serious recital.
Böttiger, in his Kunst-Mythologie der Griechen (Absch. ii. s. 6.
p. 190), takes the same view. But not the least reason is given
for adopting this opinion, and it seems to me far-fetched and
improbable; Lobeck (Aglaopham. p. 989), though Nitzsch alludes to
him as holding it, manifests no such tendency, as far as I can
observe.

But though the pagan world repudiated that “lowering tone of explanation,” which effaced the superhuman personality of Zeus and the great gods of Olympus, the mythical persons and narratives generally came to be surveyed more and more from the point of view of history, and subjected to such alterations as might make them look more like plausible matter of fact. Polybius, Strabo, Diodôrus, and Pausanias, cast the mythes into historical statements—with more or less of transformation, as the case may require, assuming always that there is a basis of truth, which may be discovered by removing poetical exaggerations and allowing for mistakes. Strabo, in particular, lays down that principle broadly and unequivocally in his remarks upon Homer. To give pure fiction, without any foundation of fact, was in his judgment utterly unworthy of so great a genius; and he comments with considerable acrimony on the geographer Eratosthenês, who maintains the opposite opinion. Again, Polybius tells us that the Homeric Æolus, the dispenser of the winds by appointment from Zeus, was in reality a man eminently skilled in navigation, and exact in predicting the weather; that the Cyclôpes and Læstrygones were wild and savage real men in Sicily; and that Scylla and Charybdis were a figurative representation of dangers arising from pirates in the Strait of Messina. Strabo speaks of the amazing expeditions of Dionysus and Hêraklês, and of the long wanderings of Jasôn, Menelaus, and Odysseus, in the same category with the extended commercial range of the Phœnician merchant-ships: he explains the report of Thêseus and Peirithöus having descended to Hadês, by their dangerous earthly pilgrimages,—and the invocation of the Dioskuri as the protectors of the imperiled mariner, by the celebrity which they had acquired as real men and navigators.

Diodôrus gave at considerable length versions of the current fables respecting the most illustrious names in the Grecian mythical world, compiled confusedly out of distinct and incongruous authors. Sometimes the mythe is reproduced in its primitive simplicity, but for the most part it is partially, and sometimes wholly, historicized. Amidst this jumble of dissentient authorities we can trace little of a systematic view, except the general conviction that there was at the bottom of the mythes a real chronological sequence of persons, and real matter of fact, historical or ultra-historical. Nevertheless, there are some few occasions on which Diodôrus brings us back a step nearer to the point of view of the old logographers. For, in reference to Hêraklês, he protests against the scheme of cutting down the mythes to the level of present reality, and contends that a special standard of ultra-historical credibility ought to be constituted, so as to include the mythe in its native dimensions, and do fitting honor to the grand, beneficent, and superhuman personality of Hêraklês and other heroes or demi-gods. To apply to such persons the common measure of humanity (he says), and to cavil at the glorious picture which grateful man has drawn of them, is at once ungracious and irrational. All nice criticism into the truth of the legendary narratives is out of place: we show our reverence to the god by acquiescing in the incredibilities of his history, and we must be content with the best guesses which we can make, amidst the inextricable confusion and numberless discrepancies which they present.[958] Yet though Diodôrus here exhibits a preponderance of the religious sentiment over the purely historical point of view, and thus reminds us of a period earlier than Thucydidês—he in another place inserts a series of stories which seem to be derived from Euêmerus, and in which Uranus, Kronus, and Zeus appear reduced to the character of human kings celebrated for their exploits and benefactions.[959] Many of the authors, whom Diodôrus copies, have so entangled together Grecian, Asiatic, Egyptian, and Libyan fables, that it becomes impossible to ascertain how much of this heterogeneous mass can be considered as at all connected with the genuine Hellenic mind.

[958] Diodôr. iv. 1-8. Ἔνιοι γὰρ τῶν ἀναγινωσκόντων, οὐ
δικαίᾳ χρώμενοι κρίσει, τἀκριβὲς ἐπιζητοῦσιν ἐν ταῖς ἀρχαίαις
μυθολογίαις, ἐπίσης τοῖς πραττομένοις ἐν τῷ καθ᾽ ἡμᾶς χρόνῳ, καὶ
τὰ δισταζόμενα τῶν ἔργων διὰ τὸ μέγεθος, ἐκ τοῦ καθ᾽ αὑτοὺς βίου
τεκμαιρόμενοι, τὴν Ἡρακλέους δύναμιν ἐκ τῆς ἀσθενείας τῶν νῦν
ἀνθρώπων θεωροῦσιν, ὥστε διὰ τὴν ὑπερβολὴν τοῦ μεγέθους τῶν ἔργων
ἀπιστεῖσθαι τὴν γραφήν. Καθόλου γὰρ ἐν ταῖς ἀρχαίαις μυθολογίαις
οὐκ ἐκ παντὸς τρόπου ~πικρῶς τὴν ἀλήθειαν ἐξεταστέον~. Καὶ γὰρ ἐν
τοῖς θεάτροις ~πεπεισμένοι μήτε Κενταύρους~ διφυεῖς ἐξ ἑτερογενῶν
σωμάτων ὑπάρξαι, μήτε Γηρυόνην τρισώματον, ~ὅμως προσδεχόμεθα τὰς
τοιαύτας μυθολογίας~, καὶ ~ταῖς ἐπισημασίαις συναύξομεν τὴν τοῦ
θεοῦ τιμήν~. Καὶ γὰρ ἄτοπον, Ἡρακλέα μὲν ἔτι κατ᾽ ἀνθρώπους ὄντα
τοῖς ἰδίοις πόνοις ἐξημερῶσαι τὴν οἰκουμένην, τοὺς δ᾽ ἀνθρώπους,
ἐπιλαθομένους τῆς κοινῆς εὐεργεσίας, ~συκοφαντεῖν~ τὸν ἐπὶ τοῖς
καλλίστοις ἔργοις ἔπαινον, etc.

This is a remarkable passage: first, inasmuch as it sets forth
the total inapplicability of analogies drawn from the historical
past as narratives about Hêraklês; next, inasmuch as it suspends
the employment of critical and scientific tests, and invokes an
acquiescence interwoven and identified with the feelings, as the
proper mode of evincing pious reverence for the god Hêraklês.
It aims at reproducing exactly that state of mind to which the
mythes were addressed, and with which alone they could ever be in
thorough harmony.

[959] Diodôr. iii. 45-60; v. 44-46.

Pausanias is far more strictly Hellenic in his view of the Grecian mythes than Diodôrus: his sincere piety makes him inclined to faith generally with regard to the mythical narratives, but subject nevertheless to the frequent necessity of historicizing or allegorizing them. His belief in the general reality of the mythical history and chronology is complete, in spite of the many discrepancies which he finds in it, and which he is unable to reconcile.

Another author who seems to have conceived clearly, and applied consistently, the semi-historical theory of the Grecian mythes, is Palæphatus, of whose work what appears to be a short abstract has been preserved.[960] In the short preface of this treatise “concerning Incredible Tales,” he remarks, that some men, from want of instruction, believe all the current narratives; while others, more searching and cautious, disbelieve them altogether. Each of these extremes he is anxious to avoid. On the one hand, he thinks that no narrative could ever have acquired credence unless it had been founded in truth; on the other, it is impossible for him to accept so much of the existing narratives as conflicts with the analogies of present natural phænomena. If such things ever had been, they would still continue to be—but they never have so occurred; and the extra-analogical features of the stories are to be ascribed to the license of the poets. Palæphatus wishes to adopt a middle course, neither accepting all nor rejecting all: accordingly, he had taken great pains to separate the true from the false in many of the narratives; he had visited the localities wherein they had taken place, and made careful inquiries from old men and others.[961] The results of his researches are presented in a new version of fifty legends, among the most celebrated and the most fabulous, comprising the Centaurs, Pasiphaê, Aktæôn, Kadmus and the Sparti, the Sphinx, Cycnus, Dædalus, the Trojan horse, Æolus, Scylla, Geryôn, Bellerophôn, etc.

[960] The work of Palæphatus, probably this original, is alluded
to in the _Ciris_ of Virgil (88):—

“Docta Palæphatiâ testatur voce papyrus.”

The date of Palæphatus is unknown—indeed this passage of the
_Ciris_ seems the only ground that there is for inference
respecting it. That which we now possess is probably an extract
from a larger work—made by another person at some later time: see
Vossius de Historicis Græcis, p. 478, ed. Westermann.

[961] Palæphat. init. ap. Script. Mythogr. ed. Westermann, p.
268. Τῶν ἀνθρώπων οἱ μὲν πείθονται πᾶσι τοῖς λεγομένοις, ὡς
ἀνομίλητοι σοφίας καὶ ἐπιστήμης—οἱ δὲ πυκνότεροι τὴν φύσιν καὶ
πολυπράγμονες ἀπιστοῦσι τὸ παράπαν μηδὲν γενέσθαι τούτων. Ἐμοὶ δὲ
δοκεῖ γενέσθαι πάντα τὰ λεγόμενα· ... γενόμενα δέ τινα οἱ ποιηταὶ
καὶ λογογράφοι παρέτρεψαν εἰς τὸ ἀπιστότερον καὶ θαυμασιώτερον
τοῦ θαυμάζειν ἕνεκα τοὺς ἀνθρώπους. Ἐγὼ δὲ γινώσκω, ὅτι οὐ
δύναται τὰ τοιαῦτα εἶναι οἷα καὶ λέγεται· τοῦτο δὲ καὶ διείληφα,
ὅτι εἰ μὴ ἐγένετο, οὐκ ἄν ἐλέγετο.

The main assumption of the semi-historical theory is here shortly
and clearly stated.

One of the early Christian writers, Minucius Felix, is astonished
at the easy belief of his pagan forefathers in miracles. If ever
such things had been done in former times (he affirms), they
would continue to be done now; as they cannot be done now, we may
be sure that they never were _really_ done formerly (Minucius
Felix, Octav. c. 20): “Majoribus enim nostris tam facilis in
mendaciis fides fuit, ut temerè crediderint etiam alia monstruosa
mira miracula, Scyllam multiplicem, Chimæram multiformem, Hydram,
et Centauros. Quid illas aniles fabulas—de hominibus aves, et
feras homines, et de hominibus arbores atque flores? _Quæ, si
essent facta, fierent; quia fieri non possunt, ideo nec facta
sunt._”

It must be confessed that Palæphatus has performed his promise of transforming the “incredibilia” into narratives in themselves plausible and unobjectionable, and that in doing so he always follows some thread of analogy, real or verbal. The Centaurs (he tells us) were a body of young men from the village of Nephelê in Thessaly, who first trained and mounted horses for the purpose of repelling a herd of bulls belonging to Ixiôn king of the Lapithæ, which had run wild and done great damage: they pursued these wild bulls on horseback, and pierced them with their spears, thus acquiring both the name of _Prickers_ (κέντορες) and the imputed attribute of joint body with the horse. Aktæôn was an Arcadian, who neglected the cultivation of his land for the pleasures of hunting, and was thus eaten up by the expense of his hounds. The dragon whom Kadmus killed at Thêbes, was in reality Drako, king of Thêbes; and the dragon’s teeth which he was said to have sown, and from whence sprung a crop of armed men, were in point of fact elephants’ teeth, which Kadmus as a rich Phœnician had brought over with him: the sons of Drako sold these elephants’ teeth and employed the proceeds to levy troops against Kadmus. Dædalus, instead of flying across the sea on wings, had escaped from Krête in a swift sailing-boat under a violent storm: Kottus, Briareus, and Gygês were not persons with one hundred hands, but inhabitants of the village of Hekatoncheiria in Upper Macedonia, who warred with the inhabitants of Mount Olympus against the Titans: Scylla, whom Odysseus so narrowly escaped, was a fastsailing piratical vessel, as was also Pegasus, the alleged winged horse of Bellerophôn.[962]

[962] Palæphat. Narrat. 1, 3, 6, 13, 20, 21, 29. Two short
treatises on the same subject as this of Palæphatus, are printed
along with it, both in the collection of Gale and of Westermann;
the one, _Heracliti de Incredibilibus_, the other _Anonymi de
Incredibilibus_. They both profess to interpret some of the
extraordinary or miraculous mythes, and proceed in a track not
unlike that of Palæphatus. Scylla was a beautiful courtezan,
surrounded with abominable parasites: she ensnared and ruined
the companions of Odysseus, though he himself was prudent enough
to escape her (Heraclit. c. 2. p. 313, West.) Atlas was a great
astronomer: Pasiphaê fell in love with a youth named Taurus; the
monster called the Chimæra was in reality a ferocious queen, who
had two brothers called Leo and Drako; the ram which carried
Phryxus and Hellê across the Ægean was a boatman named Krias
(Heraclit. c. 2, 6, 15, 24).

A great number of similar explanations are scattered throughout
the Scholia on Homer and the Commentary of Eustathius, without
specification of their authors.

Theôn considers such resolution of fable into plausible history
as a proof of surpassing ingenuity (Progymnasmata, cap. 6, ap.
Walz. Coll. Rhett. Græc. i. p. 219). Others among the Rhetors,
too, exercised their talents sometimes in vindicating, sometimes
in controverting, the probability of the ancient mythes. See the
Progymnasmata of Nicolaus—Κατασκευὴ ὅτι εἰκότα τὰ κατὰ Νιόβην,
Ἀνασκευὴ ὅτι οὐκ εἰκότα τὰ κατὰ Νιόβην (ap. Walz. Coll. Rhetor.
i. p. 284-318), where there are many specimens of this fanciful
mode of handling.

Plutarch, however, in one of his treatises, accepts Minotaurs,
Sphinxes, Centaurs, etc. as realities; he treats them as products
of the monstrous, incestuous, and ungovernable lusts of man,
which he contrasts with the simple and moderate passions of
animals (Plutarch, Gryllus, p. 990).

By such ingenious conjectures, Palæphatus eliminates all the incredible circumstances, and leaves to us a string of tales perfectly credible and commonplace, which we should readily believe, provided a very moderate amount of testimony could be produced in their favor. If his treatment not only disenchants the original mythes, but even effaces their generic and essential character, we ought to remember that this is not more than what is done by Thucydidês in his sketch of the Trojan war. Palæphatus handles the mythes consistently, according to the semi-historical theory, and his results exhibit the maximum which that theory can ever present. By aid of conjecture, we get out of the impossible, and arrive at matters intrinsically plausible, but totally uncertified; beyond this point we cannot penetrate, without the light of extrinsic evidence, since there is no intrinsic mark to distinguish truth from plausible fiction.[963]

[963] The learned Mr. Jacob Bryant regards the explanations of
Palæphatus as if they were founded upon real fact. He admits,
for example, the city Nephelê alleged by that author in his
exposition of the fable of the Centaurs. Moreover, he speaks with
much commendation of Palæphatus generally: “He (Palæphatus) wrote
early, and seems to have been a serious and sensible person; one
who saw the absurdity of the fables upon which the theology of
his country was founded.” (Ancient Mythology, vol. i. p. 411-435.)

So also Sir Thomas Brown (Enquiry into Vulgar Errors, Book I.
chap. vi. p. 221, ed. 1835) alludes to Palæphatus as having
incontestably pointed out the real basis of the fables. “And
surely the fabulous inclination of those days was greater than
any since; which swarmed so with fables, and from such slender
grounds took hints for fictions, poisoning the world ever
after: wherein how far they succeeded, may be exemplified from
Palæphatus, in his Book of Fabulous Narrations.”

It remains that we should notice the manner in which the ancient mythes were received and dealt with by the philosophers. The earliest expression which we hear, on the part of philosophy, is the severe censure bestowed upon them on ethical grounds by Xenophanês of Kolophôn, and seemingly by some others of his contemporaries.[964] It was apparently in reply to such charges, which did not admit of being directly rebutted, that Theagenês of Rhêgium (about 520 B. C.) first started the idea of a double meaning in the Homeric and Hesiodic narratives,—an interior sense, different from that which the words in their obvious meaning bore, yet to a certain extent analogous, and discoverable by sagacious divination. Upon this principle, he allegorized especially the battle of the gods in the Iliad.[965] In the succeeding century, Anaxagoras and Metrodôrus carried out the allegorical explanation more comprehensively and systematically; the former representing the mythical personages as mere mental conceptions, invested with name and gender, and illustrative of ethical precepts,—the latter connecting them with physical principles and phænomena. Metrodôrus resolved not only the persons of Zeus, Hêrê, and Athênê, but also those of Agamemnôn, Achilles, and Hectôr, into various elemental combinations and physical agencies, and treated the adventures ascribed to them as natural facts concealed under the veil of allegory.[966] Empedoklês, Prodikus, Antisthenês, Parmenidês, Hêrakleidês of Pontus, and in a later age, Chrysippus, and the Stoic philosophers generally,[967] followed more or less the same principle of treating the popular gods as allegorical personages; while the expositors of Homer (such as Stesimbrotus, Glaukôn, and others, even down to the Alexandrine age), though none of them proceeded to the same extreme length as Metrodôrus, employed allegory amongst other media of explanation for the purpose of solving difficulties, or eluding reproaches against the poet.

[964] Xenophan. ap. Sext. Empir. adv. Mathemat. ix. 193. He also
disapproved of the rites, accompanied by mourning and wailing,
with which the Eleatês worshipped Leukothea: he told them, εἰ
μὲν θεὸν ὑπολαμβάνουσι, μὴ θρηνεῖν· εἰ δὲ ἄνθρωπον, μὴ θύειν
(Aristotel. Rhet. ii. 23).

Xenophanês pronounced the battles of the Titans, Gigantes, and
Centaurs to be “fictions of our predecessors,” πλάσματα τῶν
προτέρων (Xenophan. Fragm. 1. p. 42, ed. Schneidewin).

See a curious comparison of the Grecian and Roman theology in
Dionys. Halicarn. Ant. Rom. ii. 20.

[965] Schol. Iliad. xx. 67: Tatian. adv. Græc. c. 48. Hêrakleitus
indignantly repelled the impudent atheists who found fault
with the divine mythes of the Iliad, ignorant of their true
allegorical meaning: ἡ τῶν ἐπιφυομένων τῷ Ὁμήρῳ τόλμα τοὺς Ἥρας
δεσμοὺς αἰτιᾶται, καὶ νομίζουσιν ὕλην τινα δαψιλῆ τῆς ἀθέου πρὸς
Ὅμηρον ἔχειν μανίας ταῦτα—Ἦ οὐ μέμνῃ ὅτι τ᾽ ἐκρέμω ὑψόθεν, etc.
λέληθε δ᾽ αὐτοὺς ὅτι τούτοις τοῖς ἔπεσιν ἐκτεθεολόγηται ἡ τοῦ
παντὸς γένεσις, καὶ τὰ συνεχῶς ᾀδόμενα τέσσαρα στοιχεῖα τούτων
τῶν στίχων ἐστὶ τάξις (Schol. ad Hom. Iliad. xv. 18).

[966] Diogen. Laërt. ii. 11; Tatian. adv. Græc. c. 37; Hesychius,
v. Ἀγαμέμνονα. See the ethical turn given to the stories of
Circê, the Sirens, and Scylla, in Xenoph. Memorab. i. 3, 7;
ii. 6, 11-31. Syncellus, Chronic. p. 149. Ἑρμηνεύουσι δὲ οἱ
Ἀναξαγόρειοι τοὺς μυθώδεις θεοὺς, νοῦν μὲν τὸν Δία, τὴν δὲ Ἀθηνᾶν
τέχνην, etc.

Uschold and other modern German authors seem to have adopted
in its full extent the principle of interpretation proposed by
Metrodorus—treating Odysseus and Penelopê as personifications of
the Sun and Moon, etc. See Helbig, Die Sittlichen Zustände des
Griechischen Helden Alters, Einleitung, p. xxix. (Leipzig, 1839.)

Corrections of the Homeric text were also resorted to, in order
to escape the necessity of imputing falsehood to Zeus (Aristotel.
De Sophist. Elench. c. 4).

[967] Sextus Empiric. ix. 18; Diogen. viii. 76; Plutarch, De
Placit. Philosoph. i. 3-6; De Poesi Homericâ, 92-126; De Stoicor.
Repugn. p. 1050, Menander, De Encomiis, c. 5.

Cicero, De Nat. Deor. i. 14, 15, 16, 41; ii. 24-25. “Physica
ratio non inelegans inclusa in impias fabulas.”

In the _Bacchæ_ of Euripidês, Pentheus is made to deride the tale
of the motherless infant Dionysus having been sewn into the thigh
of Zeus. Teiresias, while reproving him for his impiety, explains
the story away in a sort of allegory: the μηρὸς Διὸς (he says)
was a mistaken statement in place of the αἰθὴρ χθόνα ἐγκυλούμενος
(Bacch. 235-290).

Lucretius (iii. 995-1036) allegorizes the conspicuous sufferers
in Hadês,—Tantalus, Sisyphus, Tityus, and the Danaïds, as well
as the ministers of penal infliction, Cerberus and the Furies.
The first four are emblematic descriptions of various defective
or vicious characters in human nature,—the deisidæmonic, the
ambitious, the amorous, or the insatiate and querulous man; the
last two represent the mental terrors of the wicked.

In the days of Plato and Zenophôn, this allegorizing interpretation was one of the received methods of softening down the obnoxious mythes—though Plato himself treated it as an insufficient defence, seeing that the bulk of youthful hearers could not see through the allegory, but embraced the story literally as it was set forth.[968] Pausanias tells us, that when he first began to write his work, he treated many of the Greek legends as silly and undeserving of serious attention; but as he proceeded, he gradually arrived at the full conviction, that the ancient sages had designedly spoken in enigmatical language, and that there was valuable truth wrapped up in their narratives: it was the duty of a pious man, therefore, to study and interpret, but not to reject, stories current and accredited respecting the gods.[969] And others,—arguing from the analogy of the religious mysteries, which could not be divulged without impiety to any except such as had been specially admitted and initiated,—maintained that it would be a profanation to reveal directly to the vulgar, the genuine scheme of nature and the divine administration: the ancient poets and philosophers had taken the only proper course, of talking to the many in types and parables, and reserving the naked truth for privileged and qualified intelligences.[970] The allegorical mode of explaining the ancient fables[971] became more and more popular in the third and fourth centuries after the Christian æra, especially among the new Platonic philosophers; being both congenial to their orientalized turn of thought, and useful as a shield against the attacks of the Christians.

[968] Οἱ νῦν περὶ Ὅμηρον δεινοί—so Plato calls these interpreters
(Kratylus, p. 407); see also Xenoph. Sympos. iii. 6; Plato,
Ion. p. 530; Plutarch, De Audiend. Poet. p. 19. ὑπόνοια was the
original word, afterwards succeeded by ἀλληγορία.

Ἥρας δὲ δεσμοὺς καὶ Ἡφαίστου ῥίψεις ὑπὸ πατρὸς, μέλλοντος τῇ
μητρὶ τυπτομένῃ ἀμυνεῖν, καὶ θεομαχίας ὅσας Ὅμηρος πεποίηκεν, οὐ
παραδεκτέον εἰς τὴν πόλιν, ~οὔτ᾽ ἐν ὑπονοίαις πεποιημένας, οὔτ᾽
ἄνευ ὑπονοιῶν~. Ὁ γὰρ νέος οὐχ οἷός τε κρίνειν ὅ,τι τε ὑπόνοια
καὶ ὃ μὴ, ἀλλ᾽ ἃ ἂν τηλικοῦτος ὢν λάβῃ ἐν ταῖς δόξαις, δυσέκνιπτά
τε καὶ ἀμετάστατα φιλεῖ γίγνεσθαι (Plato, Republ. ii. 17. p. 378).

The idea of an interior sense and concealed purpose in the
ancient poets occurs several times in Plato (Theætet. c. 93. p.
180): παρὰ μὲν τῶν ἀρχαίων, μετὰ ποιήσεως ἐπικρυπτομένων τοὺς
πολλοὺς, etc.; also Protagor. c. 20. p. 316.

“Modo Stoicum Homerum faciunt,—modo Epicureum,—modo
Peripateticum,—modo Academicum. Apparet nihil horum esse in illo,
quia omnia sunt.” (Seneca, Ep. 88.) Compare Plutarch, De Defectu
Oracul. c. 11-12. t. ii. p. 702, Wytt., and Julian, Orat. vii. p.
216.

[969] Pausan. viii. 8, 2. To the same purpose (Strabo, x. p.
474), allegory is admitted to a certain extent in the fables
by Dionys. Halic. Ant. Rom. ii. 20. The fragment of the lost
treatise of Plutarch, on the Platæan festival of the Dædala, is
very instructive respecting Grecian allegory (Fragm. ix. t. 5. p.
754-763, ed. Wyt.; ap. Euseb. Præpar. Evang. iii. 1).

[970] This doctrine is set forth in Macrobius (i. 2). He
distinguishes between _fabula_ and _fabulosa narratio_:
the former is fiction pure, intended either to amuse or to
instruct—the latter is founded upon truth, either respecting
human or respecting divine agency. The gods did not like to
be publicly talked of (according to his view) except under
the respectful veil of a fable (the same feeling as that of
Herodotus, which led him to refrain from inserting the ἱεροὶ
λόγοι in his history). The supreme god, the τἀγαθὸν, the πρῶτον
αἴτιον, could not be talked of in fables: but the other gods,
the aërial or æthereal powers and the soul, might be, and
ought to be, talked of in that manner alone. Only superior
intellects ought to be admitted to a knowledge of the secret
reality. “De Diis cæteris, et de animâ, non frustra se, nec ut
oblectent, ad fabulosa convertunt; sed quia sciunt _inimicam
esse naturæ apertam nudamque expositionem sui_: quæ sicut
vulgaribus sensibus hominum intellectum sui, vario rerum tegmine
operimentoque, subtraxit; ita à prudentibus arcana sua voluit
per fabulosa tractari.... Adeo semper ita se et sciri et coli
numina maluerunt, qualiter in vulgus antiquitus fabulata est....
Secundum hæc Pythagoras ipse atque Empedocles, Parmenides quoque
et Heraclides, de Diis fabulati sunt: nec secus Timæus.” Compare
also Maximus Tyrius, Dissert. x. and xxxii. Arnobius exposes the
allegorical interpretation as mere evasion, and holds the Pagans
to literal historical fact (Adv. Gentes, v. p. 185, ed. Elm.).

Respecting the allegorical interpretation applied to the Greek
fables, Böttiger (Die Kunst—Mythologie der Griechen, Abschn. ii.
p. 176); Nitzsch (Heldensage der Griech. sect. 6. p. 78); Lobeck
(Aglaopham. p. 133-155).

[971] According to the anonymous writer ap. Westermann (Script.
Myth. p. 328), every personal or denominated god may be construed
in three different ways: either πραγματικῶς (historically, as
having been a king or a man)—or ψυχικῶς, in which theory Hêrê
signifies the soul; Athênê, _prudence_; Aphroditê, _desire_;
Zeus, _mind_, etc.—or στοιχειακῶς, in which system Apollo
signifies the _sun_; Poseidôn, the _sea_; Hêrê, the upper stratum
of the air, or _æther_; Athênê, the lower or denser stratum;
Zeus, the upper hemisphere; Kronus, the lower, etc. This writer
thinks that all the three principles of construction may be
resorted to, each on its proper occasion, and that neither of
them excludes the others. It will be seen that the first is pure
Euêmerism; the two latter are modes of allegory.

The allegorical construction of the gods and of the divine
mythes is copiously applied in the treatises, both of Phurnutus
and Sallustius, in Gale’s collection of mythological writers.
Sallustius treats the mythes as of divine origin, and the chief
poets as inspired (θεόληπτοι): the gods were propitious to those
who recounted worthy and creditable mythes respecting them, and
Sallustius prays that they will accept with favor his own remarks
(cap. 3 and 4. pp. 245-251, Gale). He distributes mythes into
five classes; theological, physical, spiritual, material, and
mixed. He defends the practice of speaking of the gods under
the veil of allegory, much in the same way as Macrobius (in the
preceding note): he finds, moreover, a good excuse even for
those mythes which imputed to the gods theft, adultery, outrages
towards a father, and other enormities: such tales (he says) were
eminently suitable, since the mind _must at once see_ that the
facts as told are _not_ to be taken as being themselves the real
truth, but simply as a veil, disguising some interior truth (p.
247).

Besides the Life of Homer ascribed to Plutarch (see Gale, p.
325-332), Hêraclidês (_not_ Hêraclidês of Pontus) carries out the
process of allegorizing the Homeric mythes most earnestly and
most systematically. The application of the allegorizing theory
is, in his view, the only way of rescuing Homer from the charge
of scandalous impiety—πάντῃ γὰρ ἠσέβησεν, εἰ μηδὲν ἠλληγόρησεν
(Hêrac. _in init._ p. 407, Gale). He proves at length, that the
destructive arrows of Apollo, in the first book of the Iliad,
mean nothing at the bottom except a contagious plague, caused
by the heat of the summer sun in marshy ground (pp. 416-424).
Athênê, who darts down from Olympus at the moment when Achilles
is about to draw his sword on Agamemnôn, and seizes him by the
hair, is a personification of repentant prudence (p. 435). The
conspiracy against Zeus, which Homer (Iliad, i. 400) relates to
have been formed by the Olympic gods, and defeated by the timely
aid of Thetis and Briareus—the chains and suspension imposed upon
Hêrê—the casting of Hêphæstos by Zeus out of Olympus, and his
fall in Lêmnus—the destruction of the Grecian wall by Poseidôn,
after the departure of the Greeks—the amorous scene between Zeus
and Hêrê on Mount Gargarus—the distribution of the universe
between Zeus, Poseidôn, and Hadês—all these he resolves into
peculiar manifestations and conflicts of the elemental substances
in nature. To the much-decried battle of the gods, he gives a
turn partly physical, partly ethical (p. 481). In like manner,
he transforms and vindicates the adventures of the gods in the
Odyssey: the wanderings of Odysseus, together with the Lotophagi,
the Cyclôps, Circê, the Sirens, Æolus, Scylla, etc., he resolves
into a series of temptations, imposed as a trial upon a man of
wisdom and virtue, and emblematic of human life (p. 496). The
story of Arês, Aphroditê, and Hêphæstos, in the eighth book of
the Odyssey, seems to perplex him more than any other: he offers
two explanations, neither of which seems satisfactory even to
himself (p. 494).

An anonymous writer in the collection of Westermann (pp. 329-344)
has discussed the wanderings of Odysseus upon the same ethical
scheme of interpretation as Hêraclidês: he entitles his treatise
“A short essay on the Wanderings of Odysseus in Homer, worked
out in conjunction with ethical reflections, and rectifying what
is rotten in the story, as well as may be, for the benefit of
readers.” (τὸ μύθου σαθρὸν θεραπεύουσα.) The author resolves the
adventures of Odysseus into narratives emblematic of different
situations and trials of human life. Scylla and Charybdis, for
example (c. 8. p. 338), represent, the one, the infirmities and
temptations arising out of the body, the other, those springing
from the mind, between which man is called upon to steer.
The adventure of Odysseus with Æolus, shows how little good
a virtuous man does himself by seeking, in case of distress,
aid from conjurors and evil enchanters; the assistance of such
allies, however it may at first promise well, ultimately deceives
the person who accepts it, and renders him worse off than he was
before (c. 3. p. 332). By such illustrations does the author
sustain his general position, that there is a great body of
valuable ethical teaching wrapped up in the poetry of Homer.

Proclus is full of similar allegorization, both of Homer and
Hesiod: the third Excursus of Heyne ad Iliad. xxiii. (vol. viii.
p. 563), De Allegoriâ Homericâ, contains a valuable summary of
the general subject.